“In many respects, Phaseolus [vulgaris] is most like our own species – spread around the globe in every imaginable climate. The white navy bean, mottle pinto bean, red kidney bean, black bean… all [are] the same species.”

(Ken Albala. Beans: A History. New York: Berg, 2007. pp. 127)

The Restriction/Submission series directly addresses the physical relationship between the human body and the cultivated hybrids it depends upon for continued sustenance and survival. Hybrids – such as beans, corn, rice, etc. – simultaneously bear the mark of the natural world and the human artifact; through their creation we witness a tentative balance of domination and subjugation. The pieces I have created for this series fashion these “natural” hybrids into sculptural forms inspired by the restrictive elements of human dress and adornment. Thus, in the Restriction/Submission series, the bean embodies our unstable dependency upon Nature; a dependency which exposes the fallacy of our dominance and control within the natural world.